The talk is that there hasn't been much information to provide answers to questions regarding the school reorganization plan for proposed region 13. That is the name that the Maine Department of Education has given to the region extending from Eastport to Vanceboro, but most recently the state decided that the name may be changed at a later date. The state-mandated consolidation plan calls for 20 towns in the region to become one unit.

Public meetings concerning the proposal are scheduled for the area and will include a PowerPoint presentation and pamphlets. Meetings will be held at 6 p.m. and dates are as follows: Monday, December 1, Crawford/Alexander at Alexander Elementary School; Tuesday, December 2, Shead High School, Eastport; Wednesday, December 3, Calais Elementary School; Monday, December 8, Topsfield Elementary School; Tuesday, December 9, Baileyville/Woodland High School and Vanceboro Elementary School; Wednesday, December 10, Pembroke Elementary School; Wednesday, December 10, Princeton Elementary School; Thursday, December 11, Baring, Baring Baptist Church; and Wednesday, December 17, at Robbinston Grade School.

A regional planning committee (RPC) was organized from area towns and has been working on a plan for about a year using a template given to them by the state to consolidate administrative services, personnel, buildings, facilities, programs, transportation and central administration, and to comply with state legislation. Some of the planners are school board members, principals, selectmen and alternates chosen by their towns. Over the course of the year, the planners have traveled and met in and around the Calais area to discuss how to compile information about 20 school districts to consolidate services. Members met to discuss the purpose of the reorganization, how the governance structure would work, what would happen to buildings and grounds, cost sharing trends and issues, adjustments and impacts, and impacts on communities if the consolidation plan is implemented.

The 20 towns in the structure are Vanceboro, Charlotte, Dennysville, Pembroke, Perry, Alexander, Baring Plantation, Cooper, Calais, Talmadge, Crawford, Robbinston, Baileyville, Eastport, Grand Lake Stream, Meddybemps, Princeton, Codyville, Topsfield and Waite. The Regional School Unit (RSU) board would include one elected member from each town. An alternate would be elected from each town and be authorized to vote in the absence of the regular board member. The alternate would be allowed to attend all meetings. The board would include 20 voting members, plus 20 alternates. The RSU board would assume all powers of local school boards under state statute and would govern by weighted vote in proportion to the population by most recent census. The local school boards would consist of three members C the town's elected RSU board representative, the elected RSU alternate member and a third member elected locally.

The weighted vote would be implemented as follows: Alexander, 4.4%, Baileyville, 13.3%, Baring Plantation, 2.1%, Calais, 27.1%, Charlotte, 2.5%, Codyville, 0.1%, Cooper, 1.1%, Crawford, 0.9%, Dennysville, 2.6%, Eastport, 13.1%, Grand Lake Stream, 1.2%, Meddybemps, 1.2%, Pembroke, 7.1%, Perry, 7.5%, Princeton, 7.0%, Robbinston, 4.2%, Talmadge, 0.5%, Topsfield, 1.8%, Vanceboro, 1.1%, and Waite, 0.8%.

The responsibilities of the RSU board regarding school buildings and grounds would be to develop policies and procedures for the use of all school facilities in the RSU with recommendations from local school boards. Finalizing the RSU annual maintenance budget of all school buildings and school grounds would follow with recommendations from the local school boards. Transfer of ownership to the RSU board would have to be decided by a vote from citizens in a town. Existing school debt by a school unit would remain the responsibility of that local community after reorganization. For example, a non-state funded portion of a school construction or school renovation project prior to the reorganization would remain the local community's debt responsibility over and above its share of the RSU school budget. Remaining balances and undesignated balances, upon implementation of the RSU, would be used in the first RSU budget year to reduce that community's share of the RSU budget by the amount of the undesignated balance. Any unspent dollars afterward become the undesignated balance of the RSU and are no longer held by an individual community.

The anticipated cost-sharing for each unit that joins the RSU can be forecast with relative certainty because the relationship of property values from one town in the RSU to the next becomes the critical factor in calculating the RSU school budget share from each town. The cost share shifts up or down as reassessments bring total town property valuations up or down. Each town's share of the consolidated school budget, according to plan, can go up or down as property value in each town goes up or down in relation to the valuation sums of each other. The RSU plan includes a two-year hold harmless period and eases the transition over the five-year period. An adjustment formula will ease the burden for the communities hardest hit by share increases. The figures that will be shown in an illustration model at local hearings in the area combine each of the town's current 2008-2009 school budgets into one sum, showing the freezing of each town's total property valuation at the state's 2007 valuation level and the freezing of all revenues and calculated budget costs at today's figures. No salary, health insurance or other benefit increases or increases in transportation and heating fuel, utilities or supplies are included.

Cost impacts

The plan delays or defers all cost shifts for the first two years of consolidation. Phases in the cost shift over the next five years are at the rate of 29% per year.

Under the reorganization law, all employee contracts would transfer to and become the responsibility of the new RSU board and superintendent. Pre-RSU bargaining unit contracts would be reorganized under one bargaining unit contract per contractual category.

To align the region's teacher salaries could possibly require an estimated increase of more than $525,000, based on bringing up teachers' salaries to last year's salary schedule for the highest salary contract in this region.

To align this region's bargaining unit support staff and custodial/maintenance staff salaries today would require an estimated increase of $136,583.

The consolidation of health insurance, retirement and other benefits has not yet been researched or estimated.

The RSU will decide where the central office will be. Calais is the most likely the location, according to RPC discussion at previous meetings. Projections on costs would increase to house one superintendent, business staff to include extra employees for payroll, legal fees, contract negotiations, moving and storage, possible building expansion, unemployment compensation and transitional office issues.

Buses, transportation and busing of students have not been evaluated by the RSU. The plan only asks for the RSU to decide the outcome or plan for transportation issues.

Reserve funds, scholarships and trust funds would be transferred to the RSU, but all funds would be used in accordance with their original purpose to the benefit of the schools originally designated to receive those benefits.

Penalties

Assuming the plan passes in the referendum vote on January 13, 2009, all phases of the transition must be implemented by July 1, 2009. If the plan fails, the majority of towns passing the reorganization law will move on. Units not approving a plan by this date will be subject to the penalties for non-consolidating units. The regional planning committee would reconvene to revise the plan and resubmit it to the state.

The state template says, "The RSU plan passes only if all units pass the plan, or, if one or more units vote it down, then the 75% rule applies; those units representing at least 75% of the student population and at least 75% of the aggregate fiscal capacity the SAUs in the region, then in such case the membership of the regional school unit shall include those SAUs that approved the plan."

Also, if a plan fails, the state will allow towns to resubmit a reorganization plan to form an alternate organizational structure, or AOS, as an alternative to forming a regional school unit. Like a school union, an AOS is two or more school administrative units that agree to share certain administrative functions and to engage in joint activities while retaining their separate identities. As in a school union, the members of an AOS may retain their local school boards, local school budgets, local control of over school facilities and programs, and local employment of school personnel. In order to be approved as an AOS, participating schools must enter into an interlocal agreement and meet the requirements for the number of students in the districts.